Can you imagine partying again with hundreds of die hard fans around you? A spark of hope for party people and organisers emerged. Indeed, on the 20th and 21st of March, physical test festivals took place in the Netherlands. 1500 people were dancing and singing for two days in a row, without keeping any distance, but not just for fun, also for science!
In the Netherlands
Back to live? Both festivals are part of a series of test events initiated by Fieldlab, an organisation founded to investigate the possibilities of events during the corona crisis. Earlier this year, they already experimented with a congress, a theatre performance, a football match and even concerts in the Ziggo Dom with Sam Feldt, Lucas & Steve, Lady Bee among others. Results from these tests were encouraging, although these events were small-scale and some people had to wear masks for the research.
Our Dutch PRO artist: LLout can't wait for new events.
The festival
Last Saturday was time for a try out with a larger group of people and in a way that felt like good old times. Well... almost. To enter the festival, visitors first had to get tested COVID negative. During the festival, every visitor wore a necklace that anonymously tracked their movements. So, the 1.5 distance rule could be ignored and the music was enjoyed as it was before the pandemic. You could see many happy faces and a feeling of euphoria among visitors, artists and organisers.
Why this experiment?
It's nice to see people partying again, but what can these test festivals bring for the future of the event industry? Five days after the event, all visitors are tested again. During the festival, the contact moments of the visitors were recorded and oxygen measurements were taken at various spots of the festival terrain. The resulting data can be used to determine whether people were infected during the festival and from what contact this may have occurred. More studies of this kind could lead to future events that can be organised in a corona-proof way. Soon, the results of the test festival will be made public and we will learn more about the future of the event industry.
Dutch look for a way to party during the pandemic | DW NewsBarcelona: 5K visitors expected
The Netherlands isn’t the only one experimenting live test events again. On March 27th, a concert will take place in Barcelona, with a huge number of visitors: 5000. This experience falls under a study called PRIMA-CoV and is funded by Primavera Sound, which is a huge yearly festival in Barcelona. They organised previously their first test-concert with 500 people that had to be tested before and after the event. When the results came in and it turned out that zero people got infected, the government gave a green light for scaling up the capacity with 10 times for the next event. The concert will be held by pop group known as Love of Lesbians. Then, all 5000 fans will be tested and tracked through their smartphone. If this turns out great, as well as the first event, this may be the way to go.
Future of events
Whether these new events will happen soon or not, we cannot tell for sure. Do you need to wear a face mask? Will a special app be used? Are you allowed to hug each other? What we do know is that a lot of people are doing their very best to make sure that we can party again this summer. Vaccination has already slowly begun and the Dutch government has promised that events scheduled after the first of July will be refunded if they get cancelled. This is being done to give organisers the confidence to plan new events. As a result, we are seeing all these announcements for festivals in July and August, which is very uplifting.
We at Gigstarter also have good hopes for the coming months and are excited to arrange many gigs as possible especially this summer. Do you already have plans for organising a cool outdoor party, birthday or maybe even an (online) small festivals? Take a look at our wide range of artists.
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